


The Ceremony of Innocence

by Verasteine



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Coming Out, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-17
Updated: 2011-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-19 12:36:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verasteine/pseuds/Verasteine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine never did any growing up. He just faked maturity until it was a part of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ceremony of Innocence

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happened when I said I didn't have time to attend to my Blaine plot bunnies. I'm very disciplined, as you can see. Thanks muchly to [](http://pinkfairy727.livejournal.com/profile)[**pinkfairy727**](http://pinkfairy727.livejournal.com/) for the beta.

The day he came out as gay was the day he'd had to grow up.

Nothing changed on the outside. His mother still cooked breakfast the next morning, and fussed about his hair, and handed him his lunch before looking down the street, convinced the bus was early.

His father was still reading the paper when he came home from school, glancing at him over the edge and saying hello.

They both looked at him like he was a stranger living in their house.

\--

He told his best friend because you don't keep secrets from your friends, and the look he got in return suggested he really shouldn't have.

They didn't sit together in class any more.

Blaine walked home alone from the bus stop that day.

\--

His mother fussed about the bruises, and his father grumbled about the stitches, and eventually one of them said it. Blaine couldn't remember who, and that bothered him, even if he knew it were the painkillers that had made his mind so drowsy.

"Why did you have to tell them? Why did you have to ask him? It's just a stupid dance."

He had no answers, only a sense that it shouldn't be wrong, what he did.

His parents looked at him like it was.

\--

"Untenable," was the word the school used.

"Effort," was another.

Blaine sat in on that conversation and tried not to feel like he was part of the furniture, not really there at all, something to be decided about without its own voice.

He wanted to shout at them, but only found the words much later, when he lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. _It's not my fault_ , and _don't I have the right to be safe_ , and _I'm not flaunting anything by being me_.

His father argued in a stern voice, using words like "negligence" and "duty", and in the end, the result was that Blaine sat at the top of the stairs as his parents decided.

"Private school," his father said with a sigh.

"Do we have to?" his mother replied.

"Yes. Lord knows it'll cost us, but the kid must be safe."

Blaine went to Dalton.

\--

David shrugged when Blaine told him. "There's a couple of kids like you around," he replied, and Blaine blinked because this was supposed to be how you turned the world upside down. "Do you sing?" David said next.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Nothing." David shrugged again. "Thought you might want to join the Warblers."

\--

His parents came to visit sometimes, and he went home for the holidays.

His father said hello over the edge of the paper as Blaine dropped his bag by the door, and his mother fussed over his hair.

"Do you want something to eat?" she asked.

Blaine shook his head. "I ate on the road."

His mother blinked. "Oh." After a pause, "Of course you did, honey."

\--

"How's school?" his father asked at dinner, and Blaine mentioned subjects and teachers and grades, and then, eventually, carefully, slipped Kurt into the conversation.

"You and this boy are friends?" his father asked, chewing thoughtfully before swallowing and having a sip of water. "I'm glad you have friends."

Blaine sat back. "Kurt and I..." He met his mother's eyes, and she blinked at him with a puzzled smile, and he wondered, with a familiar slow pain aching behind his chest, if they had simply erased that conversation, those conversations, that day at the hospital and at the school, from their minds.

He cleared his throat. "Kurt and I are dating."

His father looked up sharply; his mother's smile froze into something still and scared.

"How do his parents feel about this?" his father asked.

"It's just his father. He's fine with it."

"You've met him?" The tone was sharp.

"Yes," Blaine replied, thinking fleetingly of Burt Hummel and his son and of the two of them together. He ignored how that made him feel.

"Very well," his father said, and returned to his vegetables.

Blaine looked at his mother, who held his gaze for half a second before looking away, blinking a few times as she moved her fork around her plate aimlessly.

\--

"Do you miss your family?" Kurt asks, idly.

Blaine thinks of what he's meant to say now, of what they say in the movies, and looks at Kurt's face. You don't lie to your friends; you don't lie to the people you love. Something sits in his chest alongside that old, hollow ache. "Not really," he says, and that confession makes tears burn in his eyes, and he tries to blink them away.

Kurt puts a hand over his. "Blaine," he says softly, and then closes his mouth without saying more.

He smiles, smiles widely because if you work hard enough to be mature and grown up, people will look and see only that, and treat you that way.

Kurt shakes his head. "It's okay," he says, and sometimes Blaine thinks Kurt is so, so much older than he is.

"No," he replies before he can think about it, "no, Kurt, it really isn't."

Kurt squeezes his hand. "I know. I know it's hard for you, seeing me with my dad sometimes."

He's perceptive and clever, _dangerous_ , except Blaine doesn't feel afraid of him at all. Afraid for him, yes, a thousand times, because Kurt is unapologetically himself in a world that talks about untenable situations when they mean protecting the bigoted status quo. Blaine thinks he's too young to be jaded, and Kurt is too young to be this vulnerable, and they probably both want to wrap the other in bubble wrap. "I love you," he says, speaking without thinking again, and this time it's Kurt who gets damp eyes.

"Blaine, I--"

He entangles his fingers with Kurt's and smiles at him again, genuinely this time. "You don't have to say anything."

Kurt smiles, radiant with it, his heart on his sleeve for Blaine to see.

Blaine rubs his thumb over the back of Kurt's hand, looks at Kurt's face again, and says, "I was never afraid of you. That makes you special, do you know that?"

"I think," says Kurt, "I do. But you don't have to try so hard, Blaine."

"I think I know that."

Kurt adds softly, "I do love you. I don't want you to think I'm just saying that, I--"

Blaine reaches over the table and kisses him, quick and fleeting because they're in public, because he's flaunting things even though he's just like everyone else, and because skin and bones are vulnerable, and Kurt's smile is like rays of sunlight. He doesn't want to spoil anything, not today.

Sometime in the future, this will be a moment in his life. For now, he lets the heavy awareness roll off his back.

"Want another coffee?"

Kurt pulls his hand away to drain the last drops from his cup. "Sure. You're paying."

"Of course. I'm a gentleman." Blaine gets up and collects their cups, turning away from the table and the moment, turning towards life.

\--  
 _finis._


End file.
